Never really forgotten: The unclaimed dead

Services ensure dignity for the unclaimed in King County who lost their way, and their life

By CAROL SMITH, P-I REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Photo: Joshua Trujillo/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Joan Henjum, pastor of the Church of Mary Magdalen, a church for homeless women, listens to the speakers on Wednesday at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Renton. The burial ceremony was for 200 people interred at the cemetery who died in King County over the past two years and remained unclaimed. less

Joan Henjum, pastor of the Church of Mary Magdalen, a church for homeless women, listens to the speakers on Wednesday at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Renton. The burial ceremony was for 200 people interred at the ... more

Photo: Joshua Trujillo/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Clergy, government officials and homeless advocates took part Wednesday in a burial ceremony at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Renton. Parti- cipants included, from left, the Rev. Jim Johnson, the Rev. Susan Wanwig, the Rev. Lyle Konen, the Rev. Will Tanner, Pastoral Associate Linda Haptonstall, the Rev. Rick Reynolds, King County Sheriff's Chaplain Joel Ingebritson and Gary Johnson of Public Health -- Seattle & King County. less

Clergy, government officials and homeless advocates took part Wednesday in a burial ceremony at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Renton. Parti- cipants included, from left, the Rev. Jim Johnson, the Rev. Susan Wanwig, ... more

RENTON -- Years afterward, the calls trickle in -- to the reporter's desk, to the coroner's office. Did you know my father, my brother, my daughter? the callers ask. What was she like? Where did he live? How did she die?

The callers are looking for loved ones lost to drifting lives and severed ties. Sometimes they find their names on lists of indigent deaths or unclaimed remains, like those released Wednesday by the King County Medical Examiner's Office.

For those who remain unspoken for, the chapters of their lives end here, in a group memorial service at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Renton. They were identified but unclaimed.

The services, held about every two years, have gained King County a national reputation for burying its unclaimed dead with dignity. On Wednesday, before a small gathering of clergy, medical examiner staff and advocates for the homeless, the ashes of another 169 men and 31 women were buried in a single grave.

A stone marking the grave reads:

"Gone but not forgottenthese people of SeattleAugust 2007."

"When I did the first one of these I wanted it to be a little more than just putting people in the ground," said Joe Frisino, who coordinates the indigent death program for the Medical Examiner's Office. These are people who were loved, but were lost to their families because of some quirk of circumstance, often not of their own doing, he said. "For some reason, things have unraveled."

Cynthia Ozimek, who died in 2005 at 45, is on this year's list. Her peers in Seattle's community of homeless women did not know until the list came out that no family had come to claim her.

"It's still a bit of a shock," said Deanna Davis, who knew Ozimek from her work as a voice for other women in need of shelter.

Ozimek, the Florida-born daughter of an opera singer and sculptor turned steelworker, was a poet who reached out to other homeless women, Davis said. She was a big presence -- tall and broad shouldered -- with an intense focus, someone who, when she looked at you, "she really sees you and she hears you," Davis said. Ozimek once stopped to speak with a woman waiting in line for the first time at a shelter. The newcomer was sitting on the floor crying, and Ozimek tapped her gently with her foot. "She said, 'What are you crying about?' " Davis said. "It was her way of saying, we'd all been there a first time, we'd all survived, and we were all in this together."

On Wednesday, members of the vigil group Women in Black held hands at the burial site and remembered Ozimek's words to them to stand together and stay strong.

The King County Medical Examiner's Office handles about 250 to 300 indigent deaths a year.

It's up to Frisino and fellow death detective Nick Fletcher to figure out who they are and to whom they belong. Between them, the staff of two has about 70 years of forensic detective experience, but even that isn't always enough.

For about 60 of the dead each year, they find no next of kin.

Each case presents its own puzzle. They photograph the faces and any identifying marks. They fingerprint the bodies, and go through their personal papers or wallets. They visit last-known addresses, searching for any kind of documents -- address books, letters, checks or photo albums that might link them to families. They look for insurance cards that could lead them to medical records, and interview neighbors and friends.

Those living on the street often will have a close-knit circle of people who knew about their current lives, but little about their former lives.

Street people are a lot younger, and the population much more mobile, than in previous decades, Frisino said. It used to be that someone who died on the streets in Seattle would have a long record of treatment at public clinics where investigators could find contacts for relatives.

"Now it's a lot tougher to find families," he said. After 30 days, the trail often grows cold. The Medical Examiner's Office usually keeps the remains for two years before releasing them for burial.

"There are not a whole lot of places you can go after that," Fletcher said. "It's not like we're Homeland Security," he said. "We're a staff of two."

Sometimes, though, families surface on their own, even years later.

The forces that drive relatives to search are as mystifying as the ones that drive them apart.

Frank Elam of Orlando called the Seattle P-I recently wondering whether any photographs existed of his father with the same name. He'd found his dad's name on one of the lists of unclaimed dead in King County. He thinks his father must have died in 2001.

"I don't even know what he looks like," said Elam, who said his dad left the family before he was born.

He couldn't explain why he was looking now, just that something in him needed to.

Louise Thegue of North Carolina came looking, too. Earlier this month, Thegue and her daughter made a pilgrimage to this same spot at Mt. Olivet to view where her son, Allen Moss, was buried in a similar ceremony for the unclaimed two years ago. She had learned only recently via the Internet of his death in 2002. He was 51, and she'd last heard from him in 1999.

"He was loved by his family," she said by phone, her voice breaking. Moss was a former teacher and a painter, blind in one eye since childhood.

"He had a different perspective," she said. "He was an educated man, and he loved to travel," she said. The family lost track of him after he moved to San Francisco. He wound up at Mt. Olivet. Thegue said she was relieved to know he had been buried with care.

"That means a lot," she said.

Estrangements happen for all kinds of reasons, large and small, Frisino said. It may be a dispute over property or estates, children not getting along at home, abuse, addictions. The causes are as varied as family politics are complex.

Sometimes a death reunites a fragmented family.

Frisino recalled one case where a sister found a brother because of the death of another family member. Both siblings had been looking for one another, and were living about 40 miles apart in the same state. It was the Medical Examiner's Office who put them in touch with each other.

On Wednesday, the group gathered at the cemetery took a moment to ponder the meaning of community.

All of those buried Wednesday once had mothers and fathers, were given special names at birth, had various friends and relatives in their lives along their way, said Dr. Richard Harruff, chief medical examiner in King County, who spoke over their grave. "Many had children. All touched many other lives. Now they have us to witness their burial."

But it was Ozimek who perhaps provided her own epitaph in an essay she wrote titled "Self Portrait."

"While she looks forward to soon having a home of her own, Cynthia believes home is truly where the heart is," she wrote, referring to herself in the third person. "Thus, her lack of physical shelter is not as important as one might think. Cynthia is blessed to have a multitude of 'homes' in the eyes, the lives and the hearts of the women she lives, writes and speaks about."